


Orange Crush

by CloudDreamer



Series: Theater of Tragicomedy [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dirk Fucking Strider, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV Second Person, Suicidal Thoughts, The Homestuck Epilogues, The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 20:48:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18978076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: The unbearable lightness of being Dirk Strider.





	Orange Crush

You aren't lost.

You know exactly where you are. Every step to this damned precipice was charted out, in excruciating detail, and you stepped onto it out of your own free will. Or were you dragged here by fate? It's one or the another. Yes or no. Good or evil. 

To an outsider, you're sitting on the roof, surrounded by bottles of empty soda and shitty swords. You're staring off into the distant. If they looked closely, they'd see that, behind your shades, you're not actually seeing anything. Not the perfect blue sky. Not the sun that doesn't burn your eyes, even if you try. Not the seagulls singing at you with their familiar cry, the one you were raised on. 

You don't see anything, even though your eyes are open.

No, you see everything. Including what's right in front of you. Your eyes are everywhere. They are eight balls and they are glazed over with the white of a ghost. They are glitching as the world burns around you. They are nothing but data, sensors everywhere with lines of code entwined with every camera that's still recording on the damn planet. They're watching you pound your uranium heart on the rock for the boy you love, not that you'd ever say that in as many words.

No, he's not the boy you love. He is a fool. He is hurting you, and he doesn't know. He's too stupid to know.

No, he's the boy you love. He's the one you're fighting for, quoting a movie you know you love even though you've never seen it. 

You are all of them. You are none of them. You are everything. You are nothing-- advance or abscond. All the knowledge you've ever had is building to a fever pitch inside you. It has been for years. Years you've spent doing nothing real, nothing that anyone could ever see. You could almost die from how dull it has been. It doesn't matter.

Dirk. Dirk. Dirk. Dirk.

His voice is calling your name, with every feeling. Fear. Anger. Doubt. Sorrow. Amusement. Skepticism. Lust. Love. It's practically a nonstop show of different Jake Englishes in your head, so distant from the boy you knew when you were younger and inseparable as well. You could tell yourself to shut the fuck up, that you don't want to hear, but you're not even sure if that's possible at this point. Can you? Would you? Is there even a choice here?

He won't shut up. You won't listen, except you will, and you're responding, a million times, a billion times, a trillion times, in all those possibilities. All those histories. You're yes, you're no, you're please, you're sorry, you're sorry, you're sorry, you're you should be, you're i hate you, you're i love you, and at some point, you're not talking to him anymore, you're talking to yourself.

You're on a cliff and you're holding yourself over it, grip on the neck so tight you can't breathe. You're choking, but if you let go, you'll fall. Death is nothing to you, you think, because you've been haunted your entire life. Your selves have been breathing down your neck, all of them without their heads like Alice in fucking wonderland, which you've never read but you think you get the gist. 

You think you know everything. You know nothing. You are cursed with knowledge. You are an idiot. You are as stupid as he is, stupid as you are. 

Everywhere you look, you see yourself, and you're the one on the edge, watching yourself try to scream for help as you keep your mouth shut. Is this literal? Is it a metaphor? Who the fuck knows. Who cares. Your eyes are everywhere, orange looking at red, and you see the selves you hate the most, the ones that disgust you, the ones you think you understand the most because you're one of them. This you, this future-- it's already been decided because it's been observed. 

Coin flips in this world have one result, and that result is a binary. Even if you backed away from this edge and threw yourself on your sword, heads off, it wouldn't do anything. There's no choice here, no choice that paradox space cares about. All you can do is watch all the worlds play out, again and again. You see the red of Dave's eyes and the red of his blood, your blood, Jake's blood. Smells like rust. 

You can't breathe. 

You are breathing. 

You could never breathe. 

You will breathe. 

You will never breathe again. 

Your white hands are on a white typewriter, infinite knowledge rolling around like the water of an eight ball. You are not yourself. You are the most yourself you have ever been 

Heads.

Tails. 

It's a flip of a coin you can't even see.


End file.
